Page 516 - A Little Life: A Novel

JB and Asian Henry Young mount their guerrilla exhibition of swaying
carcasses of meat outside of the medical college. The time JB cut off all his
dreads and left them in the sink until Willem finally cleaned them up two

weeks later. The time he and JB danced to techno music for forty straight
minutes so JB’s friend Greig, a video artist, could record them. “Tell me the
one when JB filled Richard’s tub with tadpoles,” Jude would say, grinning
in anticipation. “Tell me the one about the time you dated that lesbian.”
“Tell me the one when JB crashed that feminist orgy.” But today neither of
them says anything, and they roll past New Haven in silence.
He gets out of the car to gas up and go to the bathroom. “I’m not

stopping again,” he tells Jude, who hasn’t moved, but Jude only shakes his
head, and Willem slams the door shut, his anger returning.
They are at Greene Street before noon, and they get out of the car in
silence, into the elevator in silence, into the apartment in silence. He takes
their bag to the bedroom; behind him, he can hear Jude sit down and begin
playing something on the piano—Schumann, he recognizes, Fantasy in C: a

pretty vigorous number for someone who’s so wan and helpless, he thinks
sourly—and realizes he has to get out of the apartment.
He doesn’t even take his coat off, just heads back into the living room
with his keys. “I’m going out,” he says, but Jude doesn’t stop playing. “Do
you hear me?” he shouts. “I’m leaving.”
Then Jude looks up, stops playing. “When are you coming back?” he
asks, quietly, and Willem feels his resolve weaken.

But then he remembers how angry he is. “I don’t know,” he says. “Don’t
wait up.” He punches the button for the elevator. There is a pause, and then
Jude resumes playing.
And then he is out in the world, and all the stores are closed, and SoHo is
quiet. He walks to the West Side Highway, walks up it in silence, his
sunglasses on, his scarf, which he bought in Jaipur (a gray for Jude, a blue

for him), and which is of such soft cashmere that it snags on even the
slightest of stubble, wrapped around his stubbly neck. He walks and walks;
later, he won’t even remember what he thought about, if he thought about
anything. When he is hungry, he veers east to buy a slice of pizza, which he
eats on the street, hardly tasting it, before returning to the highway. This is
my world, he thinks, as he stands at the river and looks across it toward
New Jersey. This is my little world, and I don’t know what to do in it. He

feels trapped, and yet how can he feel trapped when he can’t even negotiate